She drove the length of Broadway, until that thoroughfare became a country road well beyond the sacred, constable haunted terraces of Yonkers. All the while she discoursed valuable information and wise counsel. Augusta listened greedily, cramming mental notes until her head swam. Wardwell listened too, half asleep, lying most of the day in a bunk that stretched along the side of the wagon, not really believing that this thing was going on as it seemed to be, but not interested enough, and really too sick, to bother about a protest.
Before sun-down Mary Donahue helped them with their first camping and cooking. And Augusta, meekly submitting to the rulings of her mentor, was filled with the secret inner triumph of the dreamer who sees his dream come true under the last commonplace test of practicability. She could do it! Her plan would work!
Wardwell, standing around, easing the soreness out of his joints, and sniffing with water in his mouth at the cooking meat—. He had at this time an almost animal craving for red meat, and Augusta's diet would not allow it until night—Wardwell, too, knew with a sudden conviction that Augusta's plan was going to work.
By the time the busy gypsy girl had shown how to stow the things away for the night she had become so interested in the project that she began to feel a certain responsibility for it.
"What would you do," she asked, eyeing Augusta speculatively as the latter sat on a low stump with a red framing of low sumach bushes hanging about her shoulders, "what could you do if you lost your money on the road, or went broke, or—?"
"Oh, but," Augusta broke in quickly, "Jimmie's going to be all right in no time. And he'll be writing lots and lots. And since it won't cost us hardly anything to live, why we'll be getting rich—rich!"
She did not want the financial outcome of their venture discussed in Jimmie's hearing. She herself had no more thought or fear of the future than have the birds when they start to follow the spring into the north. But she knew that Jimmie's mind was raw on just this, and she wanted it plain that he was the man and the provider.
"Of course," said Mary Donahue, not listening. "But—with eyes like yours"—she was studying Augusta out loud—"and with the look that comes in them at times—why, it'd be a shame not to—" She wheeled quickly and jumped up into the wagon.
She came back with a bundle which she dropped on Augusta's lap. Out of it she shook a long flaming red veil which she wound quickly and bewilderingly around Augusta's head and shoulders.
Wardwell looked on, a benign and philosophical spectator. It seemed that the gypsy girl had packed the wagon. Jimmie was wondering mildly if she had, perhaps, packed in a witch's cauldron, and a package or two of forked lightning, and a few snail's teeth. If so, he would look forward to an interesting summer.